How time flies! In March 2005 I began working on digital identity. This has by far been the most satisfying phase of my career, both because of the great people I’m working with, and because we’re solving real problems together.

An interesting thing about digital identity is that, by definition, it’s not a problem that any one company can solve, no matter how great their technology is. For digital identity to be “solved”, the solution has to be broadly adopted, or else people will continue having different experiences at different sites and applications. Solving digital identity requires ubiquitously adopted identity standards. Part of the fun and the challenge is making that happen.

Microsoft gets this, backs our work together, and understands that when its identity products work well with others that our customers and partners choose to use, we all win. Very cool.

Those who of you who’ve shared the journey with me have experienced lots of highs and lows. Technologies that have been part of the journey have included Information Cards, SAML, OpenID 2.0, OAuth 2.0, JSON Web Tokens (JWTs), JSON Web Signing and Encryption (JOSE), and OpenID Connect. Work has been done in OASIS, the Information Card Foundation, the OpenID Foundation, the Open Identity Exchange (OIX), the Liberty Alliance, the IETF, the W3C, the FIDO Alliance, and especially lots of places where the right people chose to get together, collaborate, and made good things happen — particularly the Internet Identity Workshop.

It’s worth noting that this past week the Internet Identity Workshop held its 20th meeting. They’ve been held like clockwork every spring and fall for the past 10 years, providing an indispensable, irreplaceable venue for identity practitioners to come together and get things done. My past 10 years wouldn’t have been remotely the same without the past 10 years of IIW. My sincerest thanks to Phil, Doc, and Kaliya for making it happen!

I won’t try to name all the great people I’ve worked with and am working with because no matter how many I list, I’d be leaving more out. You know who you are!

While we’re all busy solving problems together and we know there’s so much more to do, it’s occasionally good to step back and reflect upon the value of the journey. As Don Thibeau recently observed when thanking Phil Windley for 10 years of IIW, “these are the good old days”.